> The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
> Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
> But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
> This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
You think that always holds up or is that an unreasonable extrapolation? There are plenty of high dollar products that don't last. And spending $100K on a car isn't going to give you a more affordable or longer lasting vehicle than a $20K Honda Civic. It's far more likely that you can buy a $20K Civic and it will last longer than the luxury vehicle with lower maintenance costs.
The poor people do not buy $20k Civics. For about half the nations labor force, that purchase could be half a year worth of income. Given housing and other costs, financing that purchase is difficult.
What they do is get $500 to $2000 cars. And those do break down frequently. They may or may not have resources, skill and or time to repair them.
A long time ago I worked at a pizza shop as a delivery boy and cook. Multiple coworkers had luxury cars, including one Cadillac sporty sedan. They just seemed to put every possible spare dollar they had towards the most expensive car possible. Made no sense, but buying too much car is a common phenomenon in America.
That mentality is absolutely puzzling to me. A friend of mine is/was exactly that way. He would rather live at home and drive a Jaguar or a BMW, then move out and drive something more affordable.
Yes they would. Banks are not the only finance means.
On a more basic level, we set expectations for standard of living, and business actually depends on, expects those behaviors, while half the nation does not have income to meet those expectations, often despite full time or more labor.
This idea of shitty jobs being worthless completely ignores the cost of the laborers. And those costs fall on all of us.
Why subsidize business in this way?
Or, if we want to do that, why so much angst over assistance?
I may be confused. Owning a luxury automobile has nothing to do with expectations for a standard of living. In many parts of the world, a car is required, yes... but a Cadillac, Mercedes, or BMW? No.
I was one of those poor people, buying $3000 cars to get by 10 years ago, when gas was hitting $4 a gallon while the economy was absolute shit. Truth is, you can find even used Civics for like $4K (although the idiotic Cash-For-Clunkers program caused a lot of lower end inventory to disappear...hurting poor people like me at the time)...and you can still squeeze 100K miles out of them with minimal repairs.
And those cheap cars are more likely to have faults that police can write tickets for, pushing those poor people into further debt, and then into the criminal justice system because US courts are just weird.
I don't understand why this has been downvoted, it describes a well known phenomenon of US courts. This was one of the factors at play in Ferguson: police were told to maximise revenue, and they were doing this by issuing fines to car drivers.
Those drivers then have to attend court to pay the fines - missing work and losing wages because of it, and sometimes losing their jobs.
If they don't attend court to pay their fines they have arrest warrants issued against them.
What a terrible article. Sure, yeah, you're poor, own it, give up. Go buy that fast food shit, get fat and damage your health. Buy all that alcohol that helps you get through life, that will definitely help. FFS.
No, you try, fail, try again, fail, try some more - to save up, and start making more. All that advice glosses over just how hard it actually is (not that it can even convey it properly), and it takes time, but you can't give up unless you're ready to kick the bucket at any time.
The reality is people in that scenario have a backlog of unmet needs as well as unsatisfied obligations, and the occasional, but consistent enough set of unexpected costs to render saving almost moot.
Skip the fries
Skip the debt collector
Skip that new light bulb
Skip proper heating
Etc...
Manage to save a couple hundred, car breaks down, kid gets sick.
That's how it goes.
At some point, risk reward will make crime / going on the hustle very attractive. Then that happens.
> Manage to save a couple hundred, car breaks down, kid gets sick.
I know that I'm supposed to address the strongest interpretation of a comment, not the weakest one - but I genuinely cannot tell what your point might be here? That having 200 bucks saved up when that emergency hits has no value? That it's better to have a broken car you can't afford to repair, and maybe lose your job as a result? It literally makes no sense to me.
Secondly, and this is my preference, but there is no need to address the strongest component.
Really, this exercise has high value when we seek understanding.
You did that by getting after the question in your mind, rather than some form or protocol. That's where the good stuff is, most frequently. Not always, but good conversation hits home far more than appropriate, or proper conversation does.
She knows she's already fucked. Not going to make rent. Already in debt and dodging bailiffs and debt collectors and intimidating loan-sharks, none of whom she has any chance of paying off. Hoping she doesn't get sick because she'll lose her job and end up on the streets. If her wreck of a car suffers a minor fault, she's going to lose her job. She knows she's already fucked. Not buying the bag of fries will not help her. She's already fucked.
Her choice is tiny bit of happiness now and lots of misery, or just lots of misery. She's already fucked. Middle class advice on making small savings to build up a pot of cash is not relevant.
I know you read the article, but you just can't stop with the very same irrelevant advice the article is pointing out is irrelevant.
> Already in debt and dodging bailiffs and debt collectors and intimidating loan-sharks, none of whom she has any chance of paying off.
Okay, then maybe she should consider declaring personal bankruptcy and getting a clean start? There are some debts that cannot be discharged using bankruptcy, but they're not the sort of debt that f---s you over and that you have no chance in hell of paying off. Solutions are out there, she should use them.
I think he has a point that you're assuming debt is the problem. It seems to me that she's just not being paid a living wage. If she's really struggling that much to make rent I would be surprised if anyone would give her credit at all, other than maybe short-term payday loans. And declaring bankruptcy every month doesn't help you avoid eviction.
No, quite the opposite for me. I think debt is more a symptom here. Here is your life (however you got here - maybe you made bad choices, maybe you didn't), there is no escape. One of the things holding you down is debt, but wiping that out will not help you because you come up short every month. You'll just be back in debt next month.
I'm not the OP but I have a somewhat similar mindset. My advice isn't just "save up", it's the following.
Look for a better paying job and scrape together every dime you can until then. Don't indulge in the burger or chips, spend that on making a massive pot of cheap hearty soup, stew, or gumbo that'll last you through the week. Bunker down and take free indulgences. (a free game or movie from a maybe less than official source on the internet if you have to)
And when I say look for another job, I know that sounds like horrible advice but it is valid. Look for the physically demanding job with long hours. Mine was in a mushroom packaging plant. It was hard work for 60+ hours a week and most people gave up in less than 2 weeks but it was good consistent money. Places like that exist all around. On paper they look like low income with poor work conditions but overtime is extremely helpful when you work 60+ hours a week.
Life is not by any means pleasant when you are poor but if you are as frugal as possible and know where to look you can almost always find a job that will leave you not always worrying about being able to pay the bills. Then you can start saving.
This advice doesn't work for those who need childcare for those 60+ hours a week, those who simply don't have access to facilities to cook cheap gumbo (cheapest places don't have cooking facilities), those who cannot store gumbo for a week (fridges aren't free), those who don't happen to live within walking distance of such a job, and so on.
There is a wealth of ways that healthy people with nothing but free time (to both work 60+ hours, AND to find that work; how did you pay for yourself while you were finding that work? Can everyone else use that same source of funding?) and access to basic facilities can help themselves. But once people fall so far that your advice is no longer applicable, and they find themselves living somewhere like the US, they're fucked permanently. A permanent underclass.
The article's conclusion is "yeah, forget trying, get that fast food, indulge in what makes you feel better about your shit circumstances"
Which is the worst thing one can say. It's just a short term relief. If you plan on living, you need to NOT waste money AND always look for better opportunities.
At the core, there's really three options: Advance (save more, learn more, to ultimately earn more), survive hoping there's no major personal disasters, or die. If you plan on living, it's best not to give into the easy choice.
Also typical HN, discuss poverty and pat yourselves on the back for thinking about the poor (unlike those other cunts), while downvoting people with actual experience because it makes you feel bad. Waah, waah. Just fucking ban this account already, I don't even know why I'm here. Upvotes for everyone.
Most advice on anything is useless if you're not the target audience.
If you're earning nothing and have no savings, you need crisis mode budgeting.
Think the financial equivalent of malnourishment - you don't want the regular food pyramid, you need an IV drip.
This doesn't actually change ever. The 'best course of action' changes at every level.
Poor people money advice is worthless to rich people too. Lower middle class advice on 'how to save for a home deposit' is completely useless to the wealthy.
Usain Bolt doesn't take advice from the guy running in the park either.
A shoutout to https://www.reddit.com/r/povertyfinance/ as a community that is attempting to discuss and distill the kind of financial advice that is useful for those with little to no means.
> Much of the financial advice online and on reddit is aimed at people who have varying degrees of disposable income, ability to invest, lots of free time, available transportation, no kids, a partner, access to credit, and beyond. This is a place for people who do not have a lot, nor ideal circumstances, to help each other get by and hopefully move up in the world.
Reddit is a crap place to go for advice if you're in a situation where all the options are sub-optimal because any advice that isn't 100% by the book ethical or any advice that puts a negative externality on society for personal benefit results in down-votes and name callings. Often times that means your "best" options are off the table. It is also very much against "low class" ways of saving money. Stuff like "just smash your old tube TV and throw the pieces in the household trash in order to save the $20 disposal fee" or is not exactly appreciated there. God forbid you tell somebody that they <gasp> shouldn't buy snow tires. The internet in general is just shit when it comes to being frugal. It's really easy to tell someone else how to spend their money.
Edit: Anyone want to tell my why I'm apparently so wrong?
you are probably being downvoted because you seem to suggest that illegal or imoral actions should somehow be acceptable just because you need to save money.
The real question here is if the author went to college and got a degree, why are they working in sandwich shops? I'm not saying there's not a reasonable explanation for their situation, but any discussion of their particular problem should start there. Obviously there are people who are doing the best they can in a sandwich shop, and those people may need better support than they're getting, but I don't think that's quite the case here.
> The way I see it, being poor is like having cancer
What a terrible way to look at it, making it seem like it’s entirely out of your control and you need outside help just to survive. There’s many examples of people who have climbed out of poverty to middle class, even upper class. I highly doubt they’d spread the advice that being poor is a hopeless disease.
People who survived cancer by doing nothing? That’s the analogy he’s making, that poor people should ignore help cause they “have cancer” and can’t do anything about it.
There's many examples of people who have survived cancer and lived another decade, even five decades. I highly doubt they’d spread the advice that having cancer is a hopeless disease.
The commonality is it was out of their control, they absolutely needed outside help just to survive, and that their odds were terrible. The existence of rare exceptions only highlights the fatality rate.
Unlike cancer, however, there's a known, 100% effective cure for poverty: money. GDP per employed person in the US is over $120000 while the average wage is just over $50k. The solution is obvious.
GDP has no relation to average wage, so not sure you can make an argument for ... giving people more money? If if I make a candy bar and sell it for $1, GDP would be $1, but my personal profit may only be 10 cents. Further, if I sold it to a convenience store who sells it for $2, then GDP is $3, and total profitability may only be 20 cents.
That's not how GDP is calculated. It's roughly the total value added along each step of the production/sales chain. If every person were equally productive and were paid exactly the value they added, and there were no taxes or government spending, then GDP per capita would indeed be the same as the national wage, though of course this situation is idealized to a ridiculous degree.
> Government spending, funded by taxes, contributes to the GDP like any other spending.
That's exactly the problem. You're thinking of Gross Value Added (GVA), which strictly talks about value added through normal economic activity. Once you start "removing" productivity through taxation and "adding" productivity back through spending/subsidies you have a new variable- the presence of that variable is the difference between GVA and GDP. That variable doesn't necessarily net out to 0 either, or even close, if the government runs a surplus or deficit as the United States does.
Intermediate goods are explicitly excluded from GDP calculations and resale of finished products only increases GDP by the value added amount. In your scenario GDP would be $2.
Regardless, GDP can be calculated by summing all income across all sources. It represents a nationwide increase of wealth. The gap between wage per worker and GDP per worker indicates that, despite labor being the only source of wealth generation, labor only receives a fraction of its productive efforts back as wages. I like it because illustrates the gap between capital and labor, as an alternative to the more traditional income inequality between workers.
a much better argument would be to imagine a scenario in which the total profit was divided amongst the workers and show that despite exploitation via low wages being the source of huge corporate profits, it still wouldn’t be nearly enough to lift the employees into the middle class.
I think IQ, which is biological and intrinsic to the individual, plays an important role in upward mobility. All else being equal, someone with an IQ of 80-100 is going to have a harder time climbing out of poverty than someone with an IQ higher than 115.
That’s probably a far too simplistic way of putting it - I would actually think people with a hard work ethic (ie gumption, ie stick-to-it-iveness) would be more likely to climb their way out of poverty.
Of course "don't by the avacado toast or lattes" doesn't help save you money when you aren't buying that stuff in the first place. Complaining that advice on Google that applies to the 15%-85% bracket doesn't apply to you is similar in saying that "Most health advice is worthless when you have cancer". You have a situation that is outside the norm, and you're trying to apply general information against that, of course it's not going to work.
Yet in this very thread is someone who read the article, read that these people do not have the kind of money that enables the creation of savings, and glibly gave the advice to save up.
The problem isn't just that common advice isn't helpful; it's well-meaning outsiders just missing this over and over and endlessly giving the same unhelpful, irrelevant advice.
The one universal piece of money advice is "Spend less than you earn, and put the difference somewhere that earns interest." Most articles, recognizing this universal truth, go on to propose ways of spending less and saving more efficiently. The author of this piece, having reduced his spending as low as reasonably possible, actually just needs advice on how to earn more.
The actual universal advice is "use that difference to pay down your existing debt, highest interest rate first. Then, after that stops being worthwhile, put your money at work." Special cases may apply - you always want a rainy-day fund, no matter what (even just the lack of stress around finances that comes with not living hand-to-mouth makes it a no-brainer) and some debt should perhaps not be paid off immediately - but I'm pretty confident that the gist is correct.
When I was dead broke that's what I did. Reduced expenses and then focused on bringing in as much cash as I could sustain.
Towards the end of that people on 6th street stopped asking for change and instead would say things like, do you know if check day is Friday or Monday this month. That question was when I realized I needed a new jacket.
This kind of has a very simple point - advice is useful iff your problem is caused by bad choices, and advising to make better choices can help. If your problem is caused by external forces that your choices can't change much, then it's better to devote all your energy to doing stuff instead of looking for advice on how to do stuff better, because there's no silver bullet, you can't do significantly better, and you don't need to waste effort on looking for it.
If after non-negotiable expenses you have barely any money to budget, then budgeting advice is useless as your budgeting choices don't matter much. Career advice, on the other hand, may be useful in that case.
If you're unable to work because of a disability or other factors, then career advice is useless as your career choices don't matter much, but financial tips on how to get the medicine you need in the most affordable way may be useful.
Also, budgeting and finding ways to save money take time, energy, and skill. The author of this article literally couldn’t afford one of the more popular budgeting apps, You Need a Budget, from the liquid cash they had on hand.
Same goes for saving money by cooking at home. It works, but it takes skill and time. If you’re working 60-80hrs a week then it’s very hard to justify that time expenditure, and triply hard to justify the up front cost of tools and ingredients. $20 for a mediocre kitchen knife is 6-10 McDonald’s meals ($1,$2,$3 menu), putting someone who is already broke deep into the red before seeing any returns.
Being a first generation American and coming from an environment of poverty, my parents sacrificed their health and lives to give us kids a better one. My father did the hardest, dirtiest work that was unfit for a beast and mother cleaned houses. They had nothing but made sure the kids had everything they needed (cloths, education, food) and through their sacrifice the chains of poverty were broken.
Millions of Immigrants come to the USA/Canada with nothing but the cloths on their backs and somehow they manage to support themselves and their families. Others are 4th, 5th Generation Americans and can't seem to get off Welfare or dig themselves out of a hole.
if the author has a degree as claimed, then the author is eligible for a number of better jobs, even part time ones, and doesn't have to work to flip burgers. Substitute teaching pays better, usually, and is easier to do; also gives you professional contacts. Getting a credential on top of your bachelor's is within reach for most people; some districts so desperate for teachers they'll hire you anyway, provisionally. With a bachelor's you can also teach SAT prep and tutor, all of which pay better than fast food. And the guy can write obviously.
I come from a poor neighborhood. I get it. Most of childhood friends are in jail or are dead. But I have a hard time believing someone with a bachelor's has to scratch it with the rest of them with multiple part time jobs, not in this economy for sure.
The author (Talia Jane) has some interesting tweets.
My BS-meter is showing a strong reading after seeing these:
"i’m pretty blindly aggressive against all the manifestations of capitalism so naturally my takeaway is Eliminate The Stock Market: It Is Stupid And Harmful And Archaic And, Perhaps Worst Of All, Boring."
"moisturizing in my 20s like i’m in my 40s with the (pointless) hope i won’t look like i’m in my 50s by the time i hit my 30s"
"lemme try this in LA-speak: hey, LA buds! although i’m in town working on a tv project, i’d love to hang out tonight! let me know if you’re interested!"
I mean, who wouldn't have trouble saving after Eliminating the Stock Market and perhaps "all the manifestations of capitalism"? Because isn't that what capitalism is all about? Saving, and accumulating some capital, some seed corn, so that you don't have to live hand-to-mouth?
I have yet to see a poor person blog written by anyone who are actually too poor to save, instead its just people who don't understand how much all the small things they buy actually adds up at the end of the month. In the end you just need a computer (20$ a month over its lifetime) with internet (10$ a month) for most non-physical needs, food is dirt cheap if you just buy the right things (2$ a day so 60$ a month is enough to live healthily) and clothes last a very long time so no need to buy new ones that often (~20$ a month), then you have 40$ a month for random things. That is 150$ a month after rent and transportation, if you got more than that and still can't save you are doing something wrong.
Personally I lived like that for many years, with 350$ rent on 1000$ income and thus saved 500$ a month, after a few years you will have saved a couple of ten thousand dollars. That was enough for me to take time off to learn programming properly without worrying about money, I am now working as a software engineer and make lots of money (not sure how people can find enough important things to spend this much on...) but I hated blogs like this even when I was poor.
There's a lot more to being poor than not having money. Being poor and healthy is not the same as being poor and unhealthy, as the most obvious example. Being poor but healthy, smart and/or educated, non-addicted, connected to family and friends who will keep you off that last step to oblivion is different than being poor and none of those things. Poor nutrition and sleep and being cold all the time can really do a number on your brain. So can the stress of not knowing where your - or your children's - next meal is coming from. The isolation and despair and distrust that come with spending any time at all in that condition can stay with you for years.
So yeah, poor people follow a very different decision process, which might not seem rational to people who have only ever been poor in the low-bank-balance sense (if that). Don't tell someone who's already deprived to deprive themselves further. Those small indulgences might be the only thing keeping people from giving up entirely. To the extent that the truly poor need advice from the less poor at all, it's advice on how to secure the most basic of needs in the short to medium term. Only then, only when the most severe psychological effects of being poor have been dealt with, is it rational to expect that people will start looking further up Maslow's pyramid to things like longer-term financial security.
> Those small indulgences might be the only thing keeping people from giving up entirely.
I might be sympathetic to that point of view... but then what about the 'indulgence' of keeping a rainy-day fund? You know, the one indulgence that OP fails to acknowledge in any way and even disparages, despite the fact that indulging in this gets rid of a major source of stress in a poor person's life? This is why you should save, even at strenuous cost. Because when you save, you do feel better.
The problem is that these people are addicted to things they don't need which makes them unable to fulfill their actual needs. It is impossible to help people who easily gives in to their addictions like this, so the first tip should always be to get off their addictions. Of course they don't want to do that so they don't listen, but that doesn't make the tip bad.
82 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] thread> The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
> Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
> But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
> This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
What they do is get $500 to $2000 cars. And those do break down frequently. They may or may not have resources, skill and or time to repair them.
On a more basic level, we set expectations for standard of living, and business actually depends on, expects those behaviors, while half the nation does not have income to meet those expectations, often despite full time or more labor.
This idea of shitty jobs being worthless completely ignores the cost of the laborers. And those costs fall on all of us.
Why subsidize business in this way?
Or, if we want to do that, why so much angst over assistance?
Those drivers then have to attend court to pay the fines - missing work and losing wages because of it, and sometimes losing their jobs.
If they don't attend court to pay their fines they have arrest warrants issued against them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-31849421
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/02/poor-for-profi...
Cheap is getting better and better. And the rich just buy new because they like to go with the trend spending hundreds of dollars on boots.
Most people I know (Netherlands) who are not wealthy have mental issues or don't know how to manage money.
Edit: I don't want to sound like I think the author belongs to those 2 groups. There are many more reasons why someone is poor.
And I really feel sorry for the author. But my comment was more about the boots story.
i can't tell from the price whether something is of good quality or not.
No, you try, fail, try again, fail, try some more - to save up, and start making more. All that advice glosses over just how hard it actually is (not that it can even convey it properly), and it takes time, but you can't give up unless you're ready to kick the bucket at any time.
Whether that's a valid approach is up for debate but that money is there.
The reality is people in that scenario have a backlog of unmet needs as well as unsatisfied obligations, and the occasional, but consistent enough set of unexpected costs to render saving almost moot.
Skip the fries Skip the debt collector Skip that new light bulb Skip proper heating
Etc...
Manage to save a couple hundred, car breaks down, kid gets sick.
That's how it goes.
At some point, risk reward will make crime / going on the hustle very attractive. Then that happens.
I know that I'm supposed to address the strongest interpretation of a comment, not the weakest one - but I genuinely cannot tell what your point might be here? That having 200 bucks saved up when that emergency hits has no value? That it's better to have a broken car you can't afford to repair, and maybe lose your job as a result? It literally makes no sense to me.
I will add more context next time. Good feedback on a difficult topic.
Really, this exercise has high value when we seek understanding.
You did that by getting after the question in your mind, rather than some form or protocol. That's where the good stuff is, most frequently. Not always, but good conversation hits home far more than appropriate, or proper conversation does.
Well played, I often do the same.
Her choice is tiny bit of happiness now and lots of misery, or just lots of misery. She's already fucked. Middle class advice on making small savings to build up a pot of cash is not relevant.
I know you read the article, but you just can't stop with the very same irrelevant advice the article is pointing out is irrelevant.
Okay, then maybe she should consider declaring personal bankruptcy and getting a clean start? There are some debts that cannot be discharged using bankruptcy, but they're not the sort of debt that f---s you over and that you have no chance in hell of paying off. Solutions are out there, she should use them.
Look for a better paying job and scrape together every dime you can until then. Don't indulge in the burger or chips, spend that on making a massive pot of cheap hearty soup, stew, or gumbo that'll last you through the week. Bunker down and take free indulgences. (a free game or movie from a maybe less than official source on the internet if you have to)
And when I say look for another job, I know that sounds like horrible advice but it is valid. Look for the physically demanding job with long hours. Mine was in a mushroom packaging plant. It was hard work for 60+ hours a week and most people gave up in less than 2 weeks but it was good consistent money. Places like that exist all around. On paper they look like low income with poor work conditions but overtime is extremely helpful when you work 60+ hours a week.
Life is not by any means pleasant when you are poor but if you are as frugal as possible and know where to look you can almost always find a job that will leave you not always worrying about being able to pay the bills. Then you can start saving.
There is a wealth of ways that healthy people with nothing but free time (to both work 60+ hours, AND to find that work; how did you pay for yourself while you were finding that work? Can everyone else use that same source of funding?) and access to basic facilities can help themselves. But once people fall so far that your advice is no longer applicable, and they find themselves living somewhere like the US, they're fucked permanently. A permanent underclass.
I know it’s a staggering thought, but give it a go.
Which is the worst thing one can say. It's just a short term relief. If you plan on living, you need to NOT waste money AND always look for better opportunities.
At the core, there's really three options: Advance (save more, learn more, to ultimately earn more), survive hoping there's no major personal disasters, or die. If you plan on living, it's best not to give into the easy choice.
Also typical HN, discuss poverty and pat yourselves on the back for thinking about the poor (unlike those other cunts), while downvoting people with actual experience because it makes you feel bad. Waah, waah. Just fucking ban this account already, I don't even know why I'm here. Upvotes for everyone.
If you're earning nothing and have no savings, you need crisis mode budgeting.
Think the financial equivalent of malnourishment - you don't want the regular food pyramid, you need an IV drip.
This doesn't actually change ever. The 'best course of action' changes at every level.
Poor people money advice is worthless to rich people too. Lower middle class advice on 'how to save for a home deposit' is completely useless to the wealthy.
Usain Bolt doesn't take advice from the guy running in the park either.
> Much of the financial advice online and on reddit is aimed at people who have varying degrees of disposable income, ability to invest, lots of free time, available transportation, no kids, a partner, access to credit, and beyond. This is a place for people who do not have a lot, nor ideal circumstances, to help each other get by and hopefully move up in the world.
Edit: Anyone want to tell my why I'm apparently so wrong?
She's not just a sandwich-shop worker, apparently.
What a terrible way to look at it, making it seem like it’s entirely out of your control and you need outside help just to survive. There’s many examples of people who have climbed out of poverty to middle class, even upper class. I highly doubt they’d spread the advice that being poor is a hopeless disease.
Is this not the case? It seems rather apparent that we all depend on our environment (including one another) for survival.
There are also many examples of people who have survived cancer.
The commonality is it was out of their control, they absolutely needed outside help just to survive, and that their odds were terrible. The existence of rare exceptions only highlights the fatality rate.
Unlike cancer, however, there's a known, 100% effective cure for poverty: money. GDP per employed person in the US is over $120000 while the average wage is just over $50k. The solution is obvious.
Equal productivity would just mean the average and median wages would be the same.
Government spending, funded by taxes, contributes to the GDP like any other spending.
That's exactly the problem. You're thinking of Gross Value Added (GVA), which strictly talks about value added through normal economic activity. Once you start "removing" productivity through taxation and "adding" productivity back through spending/subsidies you have a new variable- the presence of that variable is the difference between GVA and GDP. That variable doesn't necessarily net out to 0 either, or even close, if the government runs a surplus or deficit as the United States does.
Regardless, GDP can be calculated by summing all income across all sources. It represents a nationwide increase of wealth. The gap between wage per worker and GDP per worker indicates that, despite labor being the only source of wealth generation, labor only receives a fraction of its productive efforts back as wages. I like it because illustrates the gap between capital and labor, as an alternative to the more traditional income inequality between workers.
Its market cap divided evenly among its half million full and part time workers would make all of them millionaires.
The problem isn't just that common advice isn't helpful; it's well-meaning outsiders just missing this over and over and endlessly giving the same unhelpful, irrelevant advice.
Towards the end of that people on 6th street stopped asking for change and instead would say things like, do you know if check day is Friday or Monday this month. That question was when I realized I needed a new jacket.
If after non-negotiable expenses you have barely any money to budget, then budgeting advice is useless as your budgeting choices don't matter much. Career advice, on the other hand, may be useful in that case.
If you're unable to work because of a disability or other factors, then career advice is useless as your career choices don't matter much, but financial tips on how to get the medicine you need in the most affordable way may be useful.
Same goes for saving money by cooking at home. It works, but it takes skill and time. If you’re working 60-80hrs a week then it’s very hard to justify that time expenditure, and triply hard to justify the up front cost of tools and ingredients. $20 for a mediocre kitchen knife is 6-10 McDonald’s meals ($1,$2,$3 menu), putting someone who is already broke deep into the red before seeing any returns.
Millions of Immigrants come to the USA/Canada with nothing but the cloths on their backs and somehow they manage to support themselves and their families. Others are 4th, 5th Generation Americans and can't seem to get off Welfare or dig themselves out of a hole.
I don't understand.....
You have what’s called “survivor bias”, and you need to get past it to understand systemic issues.
I come from a poor neighborhood. I get it. Most of childhood friends are in jail or are dead. But I have a hard time believing someone with a bachelor's has to scratch it with the rest of them with multiple part time jobs, not in this economy for sure.
My BS-meter is showing a strong reading after seeing these:
"i’m pretty blindly aggressive against all the manifestations of capitalism so naturally my takeaway is Eliminate The Stock Market: It Is Stupid And Harmful And Archaic And, Perhaps Worst Of All, Boring."
"moisturizing in my 20s like i’m in my 40s with the (pointless) hope i won’t look like i’m in my 50s by the time i hit my 30s"
Here she's offering to help buy some guy a mattress: https://mobile.twitter.com/itsa_talia/status/107409983684723...
Here's she's gone to LA (from New York) for work:
"lemme try this in LA-speak: hey, LA buds! although i’m in town working on a tv project, i’d love to hang out tonight! let me know if you’re interested!"
In my thinking, this author does not seem to be living the life of a poor person trying to save.
If you downvote, please share your point of view. I'd really like to understand.
Personally I lived like that for many years, with 350$ rent on 1000$ income and thus saved 500$ a month, after a few years you will have saved a couple of ten thousand dollars. That was enough for me to take time off to learn programming properly without worrying about money, I am now working as a software engineer and make lots of money (not sure how people can find enough important things to spend this much on...) but I hated blogs like this even when I was poor.
So yeah, poor people follow a very different decision process, which might not seem rational to people who have only ever been poor in the low-bank-balance sense (if that). Don't tell someone who's already deprived to deprive themselves further. Those small indulgences might be the only thing keeping people from giving up entirely. To the extent that the truly poor need advice from the less poor at all, it's advice on how to secure the most basic of needs in the short to medium term. Only then, only when the most severe psychological effects of being poor have been dealt with, is it rational to expect that people will start looking further up Maslow's pyramid to things like longer-term financial security.
I might be sympathetic to that point of view... but then what about the 'indulgence' of keeping a rainy-day fund? You know, the one indulgence that OP fails to acknowledge in any way and even disparages, despite the fact that indulging in this gets rid of a major source of stress in a poor person's life? This is why you should save, even at strenuous cost. Because when you save, you do feel better.